Information , Consumers , and Gmf : a Comment

Traditionally, analysis of food demand has emphasized the impact of prices and income taking preferences as given. The growing importance of food security and controversy about genetically modified foods (GMF) emphasizes the need to understand preference formation and how information affects consumer choices. McCluskey and Swinnen (MS) and Huffman et al. take different approaches to analyze these issues. Huffman et al. introduce an expanded household production function approach to analyze consumer trust of information sources about food. Consumers are assumed to be rational and allocate their resources among food items that have differing labels. They lack information about the meaning of labels and rely on various information sources. Their learning about food is affected by both human capital (HC), which reflects an ability to deal with disequilibrium, and is related to education, and social capital (SC), which reflects the impact of social relationships and networks. Their empirical analysis estimates the relative trust consumers have in various sources of information. Huffman et al. ask consumers about their most reliable source among several alternatives. Not surprisingly, only small percentages considered environmental groups or industry most reliable, while both independent third party and government were viewed by large fractions of the populations as the best sources. We would have preferred to view the individual’s relative attitude to the sources. Gaskell et al. studied sources of difference in the acceptance of GMF between the United States and Europe, and found: (1) the level of trust in